The team order facing Lando Norris regarding his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri and potential victory in the Hungarian GP is one every ultra-competitive Formula 1 driver would dread, but they are not always heeded.
Famously, back in the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel defied a Red Bull team order in attacking Mark Webber – now Piastri’s manager – when the pair had initially been told to get to the finish with their order preserved with the Australian ahead.
More recently, Max Verstappen refused to hand a place back to team-mate Sergio Perez at the 2022 Brazilian GP when the Mexican driver was putting in a doomed effort to finish second in that year’s standings, reportedly because of tensions lingering over Perez’s qualifying crash at Monaco earlier that season.
Norris did eventually comply with McLaren’s ever more emotional requests – from race engineer Will Joseph – for him to pull over last weekend and the team went on to secure a first 1-2 since the 2021 Italian GP.
That event also featured a team order of sorts, with Norris told to hold station behind them team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, who was one of a handful of drivers asked to comment on the Budapest saga as F1 rocked up at the Belgian GP on the eve of the summer break.
“These things come around,” now RB driver Ricciardo said in the pre-event press conference at Spa.
“I think the advice he was given also I think is good because in the heat of the moment you don’t kind of see it all, so to speak.
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“It’s like, you see a win in front of you and that’s it. But they were talking about a championship and ‘we win as a team’, ‘you might need Oscar’s help’, and this and that.
“I think that’s the perspective sometimes you need in the heat of the moment.
“It’s also a team game and you do need the team to help you and there will be times where, again, it comes around and it’ll work in his favour.
“So, as much as you don’t want to hear it, and we are all here to win, I think long-term play it’s definitely the smartest one.”
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz replied “not that sort of history” when it was put to him that he had history with former team-mate Norris.
“We were not fighting for easy 1-2s at my time in McLaren,” Sainz added. “[But] a team order is a team order, and I think the team always comes first.
“It’s been the way I’ve approached my Formula 1 career over these last…
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